OSCE SMM monitored security situation around exchange of detainees across contact line @ Maiorsk EECP. SMM was present with 4 patrols in the area on both sides of the contact line. Relevant observations will be reported in the Daily Report

Yavoriv, Ukraine – While most of their families back home in New York were waking up and unwrapping presents, the more than 220 men and women of the Joint Multinational Training Group – Ukraine were just sitting down to their Christmas dinner

The biggest POW swap between Kyiv and "DPR"/"LPR"underway near Horlivka in uncontrolled part of Donetsk region. So far 16 Ukrainians out of those 74 in the list have been released by "LPR". Pic by Ukraine's Minsk group negotiator Iryna Gerashchenko

Russia's state TV: Host says that by providing lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, the U.S. crossed Russia's red line. Alexander Khinshtein (advisor to Dir of Nat'l Guard) claims Russian Cornet is better than Javelin and "someone" could provide it to the other side "for balance."

Russia's state TV: Female host remarks that for the first time in modern history, Ukraine celebrated Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar - just so they could do it "mentally together with Donald Trump."

The @OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) will not send their representatives to the occupied Crimea to monitor the Russian presidential election in 2018.

MFA Russia: Karasin: Do Washington and Ottawa have the guarantee that their lethal weapons will not fall into the 'wrong hands'? That they won't be picked up by militants? Or, for example, that they won't be sold somewhere in the Middle East?

MFA Russia: Karasin: Washington 'hawks' are thus attempting, the way they see it, to raise 'the price of the conflict in Donbass' for Russia. This is a deficient and dangerous reasoning. It leads to the war, not to the peace